Why should you make sure your POS is E-commerce Ready?
With the current growth seen in the e-commerce industry, many businesses are getting e-commerce ready. You may wonder the reason it is important to integrate your e-commerce system with your POS system. There are many benefits that you stand to enjoy with POS e-commerce integration. The subsequent sections will elaborate on why you need to ensure that your POS is e-commerce ready.
Benefits of Integrating your POS System with your E-commerce System
POS e-commerce integration enhances the capabilities of your POS system and makes it more effective. There are many benefits that business owners can enjoy from such a system. They include the following:
1.It eliminates manual data entry.
Many retailers are on their e-commerce website separately from their POS system. But this is not the best practice. It is better to have both your e-commerce system and your POS system integrated to avoid problems that may arise due to communication. Other issues that may come up include many errors within the system and insufficient time to manage the systems separately.
Such issues arise due to duplicated efforts when you manually enter incoming online orders, add product images or descriptions, transfer inventory, or combine reports from a system to another. POS e-commerce integration helps you to minimize these errors and allow you to post products on your website easily with a few clicks. It gives you the ability to manage both your website and your store all in one platform.
If you have a POS and e-commerce integration, you will be able to automate purchase orders with vendors eliminating your manual workload. It will also help you better your overall restocking time. Your POS system automatically creates and sends purchase orders directly to when does as soon as a maximum or minimum level is attained. You can also leverage the customer relationship management data from your website and store sales to send automated email campaigns.
Your POS e-commerce integration provides in-depth insights into the way your customers shop. It helps you automate many processes and saves you a lot of time. You get to improve your organizational structure and better your promotional strategy.
2.It offers cross-channel Promotions and customer incentives.
Your POS e-commerce integration allows cross-channel promotions, and this is a good way to increase your customers and improve sales. The importance of cross-channel messaging can never be overstated. You need a retail system that enables coupons, pricing, gift cards, and loyalty rewards. All these can be redeemed online or in-store using your POS e-commerce integrated solution.
You can set up your pricing so that it reflects on both channels whenever there is a price change. POS e-commerce integration allows you to structure your loyalty points in such a way that enables our customers to shop using both channels. Your customers can redeem loyalty points, both online and in-store. Integrating your POS and e-commerce systems helps you to increase your revenue by purchasing and redeeming interchangeable gift cards, both in-store and online.
You can manage promotions and coupons easily without going through the stress of manually entering discounts, which not only slows down your register but also increases the risk for fraud. You get to improve your customers’ shopping experience and streamline many processes for your team.
3.Real-time available inventory
Managing your website and store within a POS e-commerce integrated solution will help you function more efficiently. Transferring merchandise from one store location to the other becomes easier and faster with real-time available inventory. Once an item is sold on your website or in your store, it reflects in real-time in the database. It helps you avoid going out of stock and keeps your customers satisfied and happy.
POS e-commerce integration allows you to track your stock levels and automate replenishment of stock. It also provides real-time reporting, which is very useful for transferring merchandise from one store location to another. For instance, you may be running low on a particular product in one store location. In this case, you can carry out an inter-store transfer of stock.
You can automate the way you replenish your inventory by setting your minimum and maximum (min/max) values. According to POSQuote.com, your POS system will send automatic purchase orders depending on your min/max settings. Once these orders are sent, your vendor will fulfill them accordingly. The process is seamless, with your POS doing the work for you. All you need to do is establish your optimal inventory levels upfront.
4.It allows you to offer in-store returns and pickups.
You can allow your customers to make purchases online and pickup in-store. POS e-commerce integration increases your delivery options and helps you reduce shipping costs. You can also let your customers return products that they purchased online at your store. You have the option of adding a store locator on your site to indicate the availability of inventory in your store.
When you turn your stock room into a fulfillment center, it reduces delivery time and costs. It also improves shopping convenience and betters your customer experience.
5.You can promote to all your customers and leverage your existing customers.
Your customers will not all shop from the same channel, so it is important to promote to all your customers by providing multiple channels for shopping. The best among your customers are the ones who shop using multiple channels. They are most likely your most loyal customers. These customers will most likely review your products on your site, and they are the kinds of customers you want.
Your POS e-commerce integration allows you to carry out automated email campaigns that target shoppers, depending on their interests, buying patterns, and brand preferences. It makes your cross-channel promotions more efficient by increasing customer retention and brand loyalty. This integrated system can create email campaigns that attract customers to both your online store and your brick and mortar.
It is an excellent way to improve customer satisfaction and increase brand loyalty. POS e-commerce integration is a tool that every business owner should have in their arsenal.
6.POS e-commerce integration improves your customer experience
Customer experience is a very important aspect of every business. Your e-commerce system can greatly impact your customer experience. It includes many features that have to do with sales data, customer account management, shipping or warehousing information, etc. Your POS constitutes the software and hardware that collects your customers’ sales data.
Most times, POS systems only gather basic customer data related to a particular purchase. But retailers can upgrade their POS system to widen its capabilities. Integrating your e-commerce and POS systems helps you to improve your services, but there are many retailers who use these systems separately. It is either because they believe that their customer experience is not affected when they keep these systems separate or the e-commerce system cannot support integration with a modern POS system.
7.Accurate product data
Updates made e-commerce product catalogs are usually updated manually at brick-and-mortar stores. Employees have to import these updates physically, but this is not the case with POS e-commerce integration. It automates these updates helping customers to know what they are getting. Your POS e-commerce integration comes with a centralized product information management system, which allows store associates to correctly answer product-related questions.
It also allows you to please orders for products that are not in stock at your store and create orders in person. POS e-commerce integration provides much useful information for store associates to enable them to function effectively, thereby improving customer experience.
8.It makes shipping faster.
Processing orders manually can take time, and customers are delayed in the process. Integrating your e-commerce and POS systems eliminate this problem as order processing becomes faster. And this means that orders are sent to ship immediately they are received. It is an excellent way to improve your customers’ buying experience.
9.Updated inventory levels
When you integrate your POS and e-commerce systems, you are sure that your inventory levels will stay accurate for all transactions. It enables your employees to easily find information in real-time about product availability and inventory status in any store location. This integrated system applies changes automatically, eliminating invoicing and bookkeeping errors that could occur with employees.
10. It is easy to use
POS e-commerce integration streamlines a lot of processes. It improves the customer experience, but your customers are not the only ones benefiting from this system. Employees also benefit because they do not have to process customer orders manually. It saves them a lot of time, which is then used for helping your customers.
Conclusion
POS e-commerce integration has many benefits for your online business. It helps you streamline your services and improves your customer retention. It also helps you automate many processes freeing up time for your employees so they can help your customers. In all, integrating your POS system with your e-commerce system will make your customer experience better(source).
